This invention relates to a management apparatus for a storage system.
The amount of data kept by a corporation or an individual is ever increasing, and the need is accordingly increasing for a function for reducing the cost per bit. To fulfill the need, storage vendors have proposed technologies with which the amount of storable data is expanded by compressing and saving data inside a storage system.
In Patent Literature 1, there is disclosed a technology with which, when data in a thin provisioning volume is updated, pool volumes storing the same data block are selected from among volumes including an external storage system to execute data deduplication. Specifically, a configuration cited below is disclosed in Patent Literature 1.
“In order to improve the efficiency of deduplication, a storage system includes a controller, a plurality of external volumes mounted to an external apparatus, and a plurality of first volumes. A controller stores relevant data obtained from one of the plurality of first volumes in a first external volume among the plurality of external volumes. The controller receives object data from a server, and allocates the object data to a plurality of pool volumes. The plurality of pool volumes include the plurality of external volumes mounted to the external apparatus. The controller stores the object data in the plurality of pool volumes based on object allocation information, which is received from a backup server.” (See “Abstract”).
Patent Literature 1: JP 2013-047933 A